Frustration

How do you deal with it? It's a part of our everyday lives, especially when it comes to work. We all have horribly frustrating times at work now and again (some way more than others). If you somehow don't get frustrated while at work, I hate you and you should be tossed into a wood chipper. Well, maybe not, but I'm at least jealous.

Of all the things I hate dealing with at work, frustration is the thing that sets me off the most. Boredom doesn't really get to me. Having to do busy work isn't all that bad (as long as it's not the only thing I do). Being constantly micromanaged I can handle, but don't really like. Being overwhelmed is not all that fun, but it can be managed. Frustration, however, sets me off like no other thing.

Most of the time, when I get overly frustrated one of two things happens--I either give up on what I'm doing because I can't focus or I dive in headfirst, trying 10 times as hard, and bust my ass to beat whatever was frustrating me.

For a portion of this afternoon, I was dealing with the second case. Being totally frustrated, I went headlong into my to-do list wanting to knock a bunch of items off of it. To keep me focused, keep my juices flowing, and not let outside distractions get to me, I cranked up some of the heaviest stuff I had to listen to at work (which happens to be August Burns Red and The Red Chord) and went nuts. Once I got out of my focused phase, I realized that anyone walking past my office could probably hear my headphones I had them turned up so loud in our crypt-quiet work environment.

When I work from my home office, I tend to do the same thing--find some ridiculously heavy, breakdown filled music and turn it up as loud as my stereo will go as I dive into what I'm doing. It seems like angry, loud music is one of the outlets that actually alleviates some of my frustration. It's odd that something so abrasive would counteract such a charged feeling of frustration. Maybe it just takes fire to fight fire because I know that some lame ass Enya crap sure ass hell wouldn't settle me down.